Author: Kelly Neukom
Last Monday, I went to the Wiltern for a Mika concert.
Unless you studied abroad in Europe last spring, you are probably scratching your head over that last sentence. What’s a Mika? An artist? A genre of music? Some sort of festival?
It’s hard to put Mika into words. He’s a lanky singer with a falsetto that could put Freddie Mercury’s to shame. He’s an artist who is willing to put any sort of sample into his songs-whether it is sound bytes from actress Grace Kelly, cell phone ringtones or a monologue from an older woman about how she met the love of her life-to make his songs more bizarre than they already are. He’s an artist who’s had multiple number-one singles in the UK and all over Europe, but hasn’t made much of a blip on the American radar. He’s also the guy who croons odes to curvy women and lollipops.
Unfortunately, I discovered my friends also did not know about Mika when I told them I was going to see Mika live. Everyone looked at me as if I had said I was going to shave my head and dye it purple. It’s quite a shame, as the concert had more showmanship and glitz to it than any concert I’ve been to.
The show began with a woman in angel’s wings spotlighted as she did an interpretive dance to a slow beat. The entire stage was covered with flowers, with a painted backdrop of a colorful tree hung with skulls, TVs and toasters. Then Mika rose out of the floor and struck a disco pose. The place went wild.
Although the crowd was made up of mostly girls and gay men (as I had expected), it was surprisingly old-almost everyone there was over 30. Because Mika has only made one album, the place wasn’t crammed, but it was sort of refreshing in a way, as everyone there was enthusiastic and knew almost every song word-for-word. Their excitement and wild dancing loosened me up, and I danced more than I have in a concert for years.
However, having only one album’s worth of songs hurt him in the end, as it was a stretch to fill two hours’ worth of time. He played a lot of new songs, and although the fans continued to dance, I could tell they didn’t enjoy it as much. Maybe Mika needs to produce more songs before trying his luck across the pond.
However, it was almost worth the price of my ticket just to see what wacky ideas he could come up with to represent each song. At one point, he sang the song “Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)” with four plus-sized women in turquoise corsets dancing beside him as an inflatable plus-sized woman (in the same outfit) loomed over the set. At another, he climbed on top of the humongous drum set topless, gyrating like a hula girl dashboard topper. In between two songs, he stood underneath a white umbrella as white confetti rained down on him, before a 15-foot-tall Dia de los Muertos skeleton puppet came out and gave him a hug. Even for his more subdued songs, he brought out a cheesy electric candelabrum to place on top of his keyboard.
However, the concert was more than just a treat for the eyes. He has an uncanny knack for hitting the highest of his notes-definitely not one of those artists whose voice is made in the studio. He also played the keyboard for many of his songs, so he isn’t just skating by on his impressive falsetto alone.
The encore of the concert (“Lollipop”) was by far the most crazy-and enjoyable-part of the show. It started out with the band members in animal suits doing naughty things to each other in silhouette, and ended with gigantic bouncy balloons, streamers and rainbow confetti all pelting the crowd like the nuclear explosion of a toddler’s birthday party. I left the concert feeling like I had spent two hours on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album-and that’s a good thing.
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